163 deceased citizens remain on county voter rolls

Hundreds of dead voters remain on Davidson County's registered voter rolls, according to recently released data from an independent elections group in Raleigh.

BY NASH DUNNThe Dispatch

Hundreds of dead voters remain on Davidson County's registered voter rolls, according to recently released data from an independent elections group in Raleigh.A study performed by the Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina found that about 163 deceased citizens remain on Davidson County's list of more than 101,000 registered voters. The group found that just under 30,000 names of deceased voters remain on rolls throughout the state.Jay DeLancy, director of VIP-NC, said his group is also confident that some of those dead citizens voted in recent elections."More than a handful are voting for sure," DeLancy said, adding that VIP-NC is continuing its research to determine exactly how many of the deceased are voting.Davidson County ranked 14th among the state's 100 counties for voter roll maintenance, with No. 1 being the county with the best-maintained voter roll list.DeLancy said the deceased voter numbers are the key finding from the group's "citizen audit," which evaluated how the state's election boards conduct list maintenance."There's ample proof in history that dead people have voted," DeLancy said. "We wanted to run this publicly available data and see what the numbers are."The group's baseline data of the state's voters stemmed from the N.C. Board of Elections website. The deceased voters' names were requested from the N.C. Division of Public Health and covered a period from Jan. 1, 2002, to March 31, 2012, DeLancy said. VIP-NC volunteers designed their own data-matching software in order to compare the names from the two lists, he said."In general, we found that counties are doing their job the best they can," DeLancy said. "A lot of them on the county level really want to do well. They have that approach that it's a sacred process, and they want to protect it."The Davidson County Board of Elections is constantly updating its list of registered voters, said Ruth Huneycutt, director of the board of elections. Huneycutt said the board receives a list of in-county deaths from the Davidson County Register of Deeds about once a week. The board of elections office also receives a list of deceased citizens from the state health department, she said.However, if a registered voter dies outside of the county or out of state, the chances their death is reported to the Davidson County Board of Elections office goes down, Huneycutt said."You can't remove a person from the list without something in writing," Huneycutt said. "That being said, I'm not saying that certain circumstances can lead to things falling through the cracks."For the most part, though, it appears Davidson County has been fairly efficient in updating its voter roll, as the county averages about 16 deceased citizens per 10,000 voters on its list, according to VIP-NC data.Huneycutt said she can't say for sure that no deceased citizens have voted in the past, adding that certain situations make it almost impossible to prevent. For instance, if a citizen sent in an absentee ballot in mid-September and died in mid-October, it is unlikely the board of elections will be notified before the general election Nov. 6. Even further, if that person died out of county or out of state, it is a possibility the elections board would not be notified at all.VIP-NC delivered the list of about 27,500 names of deceased voters it believes are still on rolls to the N.C. Board of Elections at the end of August. The state board has publicly announced that it was already reviewing the issue and has already identified more than 20,000 of the names. For more information on VIP-NC's data, visit voterintegrityproject.com.Nash Dunn can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 227, or at nash.dunn@the-dispatch.com.